In the wake of DON'T BREATHE's success, what can we learn about writing horror films?

Horror is a genre that, as a whole, doesn't get a lot of respect. That seems a little unfair when you consider that the misses in that genre probably aren't significantly greater than the misses in any genre. Maybe the disdain has to do with the fact that slasher films have frequently been less highbrow and less polished efforts, while the respectable successes always get gerrymandered into more highbrow categories. Thus, we get the notion that PSYCHO isn't a horror film, it's a "Hitchcockian thriller." SILENCE OF THE LAMBS isn't a horror film, it's a "psychological thriller."

The success of DON'T BREATHE this past weekend should be a reminder of all the virtues of this much maligned genre. Here, in the waning dog days of summer, a new film opened up with $26.1 million. According to Box Office Mojo, that's up 43.5% from the same weekend last year. That fact alone would probably be reason to celebrate, but it gets even better. It was made for less than $10 million, which means it has a FAR shorter road to travel before its in the black and starts making money. And guess what? All of this was achieved with any big name stars.

That's the thing about horror - it's perhaps the one genre left where it's understood the concept is king. The box office proves that audiences don't need that extra nudge to go see something that looks interesting to them. I've always felt that same philosophy was transferable to other genres, but there remains this conviction that a project needs "marketable" names to earn a green light. (And if any of you have ever dealt with foreign financing, you understand how insane it can often be to try to put together a cast that the money men deem worth their investment.)

When I was still working as a reader, horror was probably one of the more frequent genres I read. Sadly, it was probably also the genre where I detected the most laziness on the part of the writers. Too many were seemingly satisfied with being generic. Perhaps it's that old snobbery at work again, it's "just" horror, so why work to make it good, right? Since DON'T BREATHE is likely to provoke another wave of horror writers, I want to pontificate about what I think makes a great horror film.

I took a look at many of the horror releases of the past several years and when you see the profit margin on the low-budget entries, it might inspire you to see how strong your affinity is for that genre. Blumhouse's success with PARANORMAL ACTIVITY has been talked to death at this point. Of the six films in the series, five of them were made for less than $5 million, and until the penultimate release, THE MARKED ONES, worldwide gross was always well over $100 million. Then again, the final film cost $10 million to make and it only made $18 domestically. ($59 million was taken in overseas.)

When you look at the PA numbers, you can see the first dip happened with PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4, which is probably not coincidentally the first film in the series where the story really seemed to be treading water. The lack of payoff likely discouraged attendance at the next entry, and by the time the final film rolled around most viewers who had cared were long gone.

Blumhouse's other franchise THE PURGE seems to be holding strong. The first film grossed $64.5 million domestically and each sequel's domestic take has risen. The films keep getting gradually more expensive, but both sequels have taken in over $100 million worldwide. I didn't like the original film at all, but something about this hook really seems to appeal to people.


The INSIDIOUS films are also a huge success with regard to the budget to box office ratio. The first one cost $1.5 million and earned $97 million, and it's the lowest grossing of the three.

Lesson: in a franchise, keep finding new angles within the framework of the concept. Making a horror film cheap isn't enough; having an inventive story and scares matters.

So what kind of horror story do you want to tell? My own interests lean more towards the Hitchcockian end of the spectrum. I like character-driven horror stories. For me, it's always more unsettling when the evil is relatable to something in the real world. This is part of the reason that THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT was so effective - getting lost in the woods felt like something any of us could have done and the lack of any on-screen visual effects meant that viewers weren't immediately triggered to feel, "Okay, that's clearly fake so I'm now very aware I'm watching a construct.

Great horror stories start with primal emotions and fears. LIGHTS OUT had a supernatural killer, but the film cleverly reveals that her power is that she is strong in darkness and is invisible in the light. She might not be able to hurt you in the light, but you can't stay out of the dark forever. And when that moment comes, she's ready to kill you. It's a smart primal fear to build off of because studies show that fear of darkness is an evolutionary trait, not a learned one. On a visceral, gut level, the average person is likely incapable of NOT being triggered by this film.

A NIGHTMARE OF ELM STREET uses a variation of this, giving the killer power in his victim's nightmares. Everyone has nightmares and surely there are few people who haven't woken from a terrifying dream at some point. Those emotions are what makes Freddy Krueger such an effective bad guy. It also makes for a strong thematic through-line to hang a feature on. This will have to be a story about the heroine confronting her worst fears and surviving.

You can't neglect theme in horror films. Like the primal fears, these will be the elements that resonate with your audience on more than just a superficial way. LIGHTS OUT plays as an allegory for depression, and perhaps specifically trying to deal with a loved one who suffers from it. Any idiot can write a monster leaping out of the darkness and get a momentary scare from the audience. The REAL scare you want is the kind that lingers for days, that becomes a dull buzz in the viewers head even long after the end credits have rolled. You'll find these factors present in both supernatural and non-supernatural films, so no matter the horror subgenre you're working in, you want to be thinking about these questions.

Lesson: Theme matters, so have one. (And it should probably be in your mind as you're breaking the story, not tacked on after everything else is figured out.)

Let's take a look at some recent horror films that were either standalones, or the first in their series:

Supernatural horror
Insidious - $97M worldwide on a $3 million budget.
Sinister - $77M worldwide on a $3 million budget.
Lights Out - $126M worldwide on a $4.9 million budget.
Ouija - $103.5M worldwide on a $5 million budget.
Unfriended - $64M worldwide on a $1 million budget.

For me, Unfriended is the one of the bunch I wish I wrote because it had the most inventive high concept premise (the entire film is told via laptop screen, through Skype calls and chatrooms.) It's a much smaller story than the others, but it understands how to use its limitations to reveal things about the characters. That said, Sinister's pitch-dark ending is the rare horror finale that really, deeply chilled me. It absolutely earns that visceral punch from everything building up to it.

Non-Supernatural Horror
The Purge - $89M worldwide on a $3 million budget.
The Gift - $58.9M worldwide on a $5 million budget.
The Visit - $98.5M worldwide on a $5 million budget.

THE PURGE goes for a less repeatable concept and casts itself in the near future, where the laws have established The Purge, a yearly free-for-all where all laws are suspended and anything goes, including murder. I didn't particularly like this film, nor did I find the premise credible at all. However, that same hook is what drew people into the theaters, wondering, "How will they pull this off?"

Lesson: Sometimes audiences will go for something wildly original even if it's implausible.

THE VISIT, however, is far better at drawing on real-world fears. There are themes of aging and dementia, even invoking our pity for the elder folks and seemingly kindly grandparents, who seem to be succumbing to senility. Seeing that visited upon adults can be very hard on children, though by this point, it's likely a part of most childhoods. There's a twist near the end that's inventive, but might be too clever for its own good. It's something of a knife to the gut, but it's also the point where the film trades any poignant identification for visceral thrills. To be honest, sometimes that can work. It's like when Spielberg was told that blowing up the shark in JAWS was a ludicrous twist. His reply was some version of: "If I've got them in my hand for two hours, they'll believe anything I show them in the last five minutes."

Lesson: Take an experience that one might find unsettling or uncomfortable and amp it up to its possible worst case scenario. The old folks' deterioration lingers far more than the twist the film pulls in its third act.

It's THE GIFT that casts its spell by being grounded from minute one. Simon and his wife Robyn meet Gorod, an old classmate of Simon's who is instantly a little TOO friendly. Simon remembers him as "Gordo the Weirdo," an awkward kid in high school. It's archetypical enough that every viewer will either identify with Gordo, or think of their own "weirdo" they knew in high school. Simon doesn't like Gordo's efforts at becoming a friend, but Simon's wife is more receptive. It's a neat writing trick that makes Robyn empathetic, gets the audience feeling a little bad for Gordo, and makes us wonder if Simon's just being protective, a jerk, or if he's right to be wary of Gordo.

Every twist in this movie comes from pure character, even as it escalates into a stalker thriller. Having written a stalker thriller, I learned that a key rule is to keep the stalker relate-able. In the case of my script, several people said they found themselves on the stalker's side and were hoping he could just explain himself in the end and make everything okay. I like a movie where it's possible to empathize with the bad guy because it usually means the writer has done a good job of making that person a fleshed-out character.

Lesson: Character is king. A good tip is to plot only the character stuff first on its own and see if it holds together without the scares goosing the excitement every 15 minutes.

With supernatural films, when you're using paranormal creatures to personify abstract ideas or fears, you can sometimes get away with a lighter touch on the character work. If your story takes place in the real world, everything MUST have depth to it. That's what makes Hannibal Lector so scary and fascinating at the same time. It's what draws us into Clarice Starling's crusade to capture Buffalo Bill and be taken seriously as a woman in a man's world. Those are Academy Award-winning roles because so much effort was made to make them more than just "the cop" and "the psychopath." If you're writing a movie like this, your standards must be higher

One of my favorite horror films of all time, SCREAM, would not work if there wasn't recognizable human emotion driving the killers' plan. You can argue that their motivations are taken to a severe extreme - people have killed for revenge and notoriety before, but few have probably gone after as many bystanders just to serve the narrative they plan on selling to the cops. Also, the film plays fair with all of its cheats. Every misdirection is clearly motivated and directed so that it makes sense in hindsight.

SCREAM's other strength is that its heroine is at least as interesting as her adversary. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET got this right in the first installment, then forgot it for several subsequent entries. Write the kind of role that could stay interesting across several films. The horror films that get a bad rap tend to have weak, barely developed characters.

Lesson: from a character standpoint, there's really no great distinction between writing a horror film and writing any other genre. Characters shouldn't be two-dimension just because they're eventually canon fodder for the slasher or supernatural threat.

This year has seen a lot of strong horror and thrillers, some low-budget, some not. 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE, THE SHALLOWS, and THE INVITATION are three that spring to mind with one thing in common - they're all limited locations. Two of them are confined not just in setting, but in time span too. 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE is the exception, spreading its story out over several months, but that also uses the claustrophobia well, like a pressure cooker for inter-character tension. The situations are more extreme, but the intensity can work as a trigger for the viewers own emotions.

Also, I'm a sucker for these sorts of locked-room or limited location thrillers. If you can come up with an original hook to confine a story to a few sets, you might find yourself with some buzz around your story.

Lesson: containing your locations doesn't just have to be a limitation of budget, but can be an asset in forcing tension to a heightened and extreme level. This can be useful with a more heightened premise that doesn't immediately conform to some of the relatability issues I discussed above.

This obviously isn't everything you need to know about writing horror, but give it some thought when working on your next horror script. Do it right and you'll have created the sort of film that critics will keep finding reasons to label as "elevated genre" or "thriller" or whatever "respectable" term they're using for horror that week.

My tribute to WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE on Film School Rejects

I know that the internet of late has devoted an excessive amount of time to '90s nostalgia. This year especially has been a deluge of 20-year retrospective pieces, as it turns out that 1994 was a pretty big year for pop culture. And yet, as tired as I am of such things, I joined the ranks of the guilty this week with a piece I wrote for Film School Rejects.

It has been twenty years since the release of my favorite sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street, the very meta Wes Craven's New Nightmare. It's always felt to me like a very clever movie that was under-appreciated in its time and any notoriety is has in retrospect seems to be as a footnote to Scream, which followed two years later. I gather that "real" horror fans hate how it takes place in the "real world" makes Freddy of the previous six films just a character in a movie. The movie's uniqueness repells some, but for me, that's why it's worthy of being celebrated.

I'm grateful that Film School Rejects gave me a forum in which to express that.

“Every kid knows who Freddy is. He’s like Santa Claus or King Kong.” – Heather Langenkamp in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. 

In a film full of truthful observations, that line always struck me as the truest, or at least the most relevant to my own relationship with Freddy Krueger and the Nightmare on Elm Street film series. I was four when the original came out in 1984, so I was too young to experience that film or most of the first few sequels on their first release. As I grew up, my awareness of Freddy came from what seeped into popular culture. As best as I can remember, my introduction was either a kid in my 4th grade class wearing a Freddy mask for Halloween, or possibly an ad for the costume in a comic book. 

So “my” Freddy was less the disturbing child murderer whom Wes Craven created for what probably felt like a standalone film, and more the watered-down pop icon. Less a psychological threat, and more of a catchphrase-spewing gimmick killer. It’s the difference between how the shark from Jaws plays on screen, and experiencing him on the Universal Studios tram tour. 

As a result, Freddy never scared me as a kid, nor did I have any desire to see the movies. I knew that they came out every year or two and I assumed all of the movies were stupid slasher films, in which, I saw no appeal. I remember seeing a trailer for Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare in 1991 and thinking it looked incredibly awful. Good riddance. 

Then came 1994 and the release of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. 

Read the rest over at Film School Rejects.

Tuesday Talkback - Should studios inform the original writers when they prep a remake?

Sunday, Deadline posted a story about how screenwriter James Toback was rather upset to find out secondhand that Paramount was planning a remake of The Gambler. Toback was the writer of the original version, which he considers one of his more personal films. Chief among Toback's complaints was the fact that the studio didn't even offer the courtesy of letting him know about the remake before announcing it to the world via Deadline.

Legally, Paramount was under no obligation to do so. They bought the script. They own the property. In a legal sense, Toback has no claim to the material any longer so there's no reason they would have had to tell him - but would it at least have been the moral thing to do.

This isn't the first such case of this happening. Wes Craven was rather blunt last year when discussing the fact that he wasn't consulted about the remake of what is arguably the film most associated with him - A Nightmare on Elm Street. He not only directed the original film, but he wrote the script and created the character of Freddy Krueger. Considering the studio had been looking to jump-start the franchise, you'd think they'd have at least courted him in an effort to secure his blessing, yet all indications from Craven are that they didn't. But again, they didn't have to.

And of course, the people who hold the rights to the original film version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer have been trying for a few years now to get their reboot off the ground - without the involvement of creator Joss Whedon. This again strikes me as a botched move, as not getting Whedon's blessing runs the risk of alienating his loyal fan base.

But what do you think? No laws are being broken here, so it's not as if the studios or producers owe the original creators anything in a legal sense. If you were in the studio's shoes, would you have given the original writers a courtesy call? If you were one of those original writers, would it bug you to find this stuff out from a third party, or do you think you'd accept that this is how the business works.

Why I like Wes Craven's characters and what I fear from Scream 4

In my bid to have some holiday-specific content on the blog this week, I started writing a post on what it takes to write a good slasher movie. A few paragraphs in, I was bothered by the feeling that I'd written something like this before. Turns out, I had, in a piece last year called "Lessons from Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson's Scream."

I briefly considered pulling out my DVD of Scream 2 and writing a piece on what makes a good horror sequel. And while I do enjoy Scream 2, it's clearly the anomaly when it comes to sequels. In the horror genre, I'd be hard-pressed to think of many good sequels. (Does Aliens count? Maybe Wes Craven's New Nightmare?)

And here's my problem - Horror sequels frequently turn into mindless rehashes of their predecessors because often the only continuing character is the killer - the antagonist. Most of time, there are few survivors in a horror film and when someone does live into the next sequel, they're disposed of rather quickly. After all, there are only so many times that the same girl can get menaced by the same villain before it starts to feel hackneyed.

Scream somehow manages to make this work by keeping the victim of Sydney as the protagonist while constantly shifting the person under the mask of the killer. Sure, the motive every time is the revenge against Sydney (and the ultimate revenge motive in Scream 3 is a little far-fetched and convoluted. I really can't argue with that.), and she's the axis that the film series turns on. (Again, Scream 3 messes with this somewhat by giving Neve Campbell less screen time, but she's still the prime target.)

And in thinking about this, I realize it's something I really like about Wes Craven's work: he really cares about character. From Nancy in Nightmare on Elm Street to Rachel McAdams' character in Red Eye, Craven tries to make his protagonists - his victims - truly fleshed-out characters. It's screenwriting 101 - you can't have a compelling story without a strongly-defined lead. Most of the time, I find that Craven takes a more intellectual approach to his characters and story structure. Listening to his director commentaries backs up that impression.

(I confess I've not been able to see My Soul to Take yet, so I'm unable to incorporate Mr. Craven's latest work into my hypothesis. Also, I don't mean to diminish the contributions of the many screenwriters he's worked with, particularly Scream's Kevin Williamson. However, when you notice particular themes in a director's work across several writers, it's hard not to take that element as something the director is committed to.)

This is where so many horror specs I read fail. I see a lot of scripts that are clearly trying to be franchises, to the point where all they've done is work out the gimmick that will drive the series. So much time is invested in giving the killer a cool look, or a gruesome gimmick to his kills. Where they fail is in coming up with a strong dramatic arc to sustain the story. Too often the cast of characters is treated as little more than a future body count: a dead asshole jock here, a slutty girl with nice breasts there.

And sure, there are plenty of bad B-movies made every year. There's a long list of produced slashers that never dug deep.

But the horror thrillers that endure? The ones that future filmmakers grow up wanting to emulate? Psycho, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream - they all have an important element in common: strong character arcs for their protagonists. Your hero isn't the guy wielding the blade and drawing blood. Never forget that.

This is why I'm both anticipating and dreading Scream 4 next year. The nostalgist in me loves the idea of getting "the old gang" back together. The massive cast that seems to include every young actor and actress in Hollywood also should make for fun viewing. I'm guessing this is going to make for a high body count, and with so many stars, the "death order" will be less predictable. (Most of the time, the order of the deaths roughly corresponds to the reverse order of the billing in the credits.)

My big fear is that in order to "pass the torch" to younger generation, Sydney will be killed. That makes a lot of dramatic sense... and yet it doesn't. The series is Sydney's story. If she dies, she loses. Yet, if she lives, how can the story possibly continue? How many times can new madmen come after her? How can a genre driven by the teenage audience be sustained with an "older" protagonist like Neve Campbell, as opposed to the more teen-appropriate Emma Roberts?

(Confession: Emma's a cute girl, no doubt... but Neve was my crush in 1996 and she still gets my vote today.)

The place to kill Sydney might well have been in Scream 3. Coming in Scream 4, it might tarnish the construction of the first trilogy. A new story might have been launched at the expense of the old one.

So perhaps Scream 4 will give us the most unexpected ending of all - where ALL the teen protagonists who seem to be groomed as Campbell's replacements are killed and the next chapter of Sydney's life is launched. Dare I hope that Craven's history of commitment to character suggests this, particularly when those characters are developed under Mr. Williamson's pen?

I'm not saying that a good story can't be told with Sydney's death, but it could be a challenge to pull this off in a satisfying manner. Sydney's death could be an appropriate tragedy, but the challenge beyond that would be convincing the audience that a larger story will still continue beyond Sydney's death.

Is it possible? I don't know, but come this April, I'll be there opening day to find out. (Or more likely, I'll be there at midnight the evening before opening day.)

Interview with NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET remake writer Eric Heisserer - Part II

Go here for Part I of this interview, where screenwriter Eric Heisserer discusses how he broke in and goes into detail about a number of the creative decisions made in his script for the recent remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Today, Eric talks a little about his plans for The Thing remake and Final Destination 5.

I saw an interesting quote from you regarding your thoughts on using CGI in The Thing: “I don’t know what kind of authority I had as the writer, but I came in wanting them to make this a practical effect movie. I wasn’t going to write something that was going to be a CGI-fest. I held their feet to the fire on that. That may be what got me the job, or it may be that I wanted to protect the original as much as possible and to create a companion piece that we felt would work seamlessly as a double feature with Carpenter’s The Thing.”

You don’t often hear about writers dictating those sorts of terms to the studio, particularly in a system where the writer seems to be the most replaceable person on the production. Did it take a lot of guts to make that statement? Did your agent know you were going to take such a hard line, and was he discouraging you from putting yourself out there? And be honest, were you surprised when the studio said, “Okay?”


Well, let me clarify here: I came in making those demands, and the producers smiled and said basically “You’re hired.” They didn’t say “Okay” in the sense that they were heeding my demands. I felt they were already thinking the same thing, so it was a matter of meeting a kindred spirit when I showed up at their door. But the studio never makes a decision like that based on what the writer demanded. The studio decides what is the least expensive or the strategically wisest move, and does that thing. Our responsibility was to present a story with effects that could be achieved conventionally as often as possible.

I understand that on The Thing, they threw out the entire previous draft by Ron Moore and had you start from scratch. Can you discuss the advantages and disadvantages of working like this as opposed to rewriting an existing draft, as I assume you did on Nightmare?

It’s like being the first writer on, except odds are good you’ll still share credit with the first writer. I tried not to think about the politics of that scenario and just focused on building the best story I could. Ron Moore is an amazing writer who is a master at writing drama framed in a science fiction setting or concept. Just because the studio chose to start over—that doesn’t mean anything, really. My job was still to give them a movie that worked. Something they could go shoot.

How did you end up with this assignment? After Nightmare were you tagged as “the horror reboot guy?”

I don’t know if I was seen as the reboot guy, but my Nightmare script work did get me in the room for The Thing. At that point it was up to me. And what did I do? Make demands! In hindsight it was downright foolish, but I have such a love for Carpenter’s movie, and I didn’t want to see this prequel done wrong.

Do you see yourself working in other genres, or is horror your passion?

I would love to expand. Oddly enough, the work I did at Bruckheimer before I got the Elm Street gig—those jobs were all big-budget science fiction action/adventure movies. Big summer fare. Alien Wars and The Host (not the Korean monster movie, but a sci-fi novel by Peter Emschwiller) were about as far from creepy horror as you can get. I’d love to get back to that kind of epic storytelling soon.

Tripp Stryker very much approved of Mary Elizabeth Winstead as your leading lady. I can’t print his exact words, but they roughly translated to the fact that he’s excited by the casting and he hopes to see a lot of her in the movie.

I imagine Tripp will be going to see Scott Pilgrim a lot.

I might have to make him do a review of that.

I know that Final Destination 5 is still in the very early stages, but you told Twitter that you got the job with a two-word pitch: “Lasik Surgery.” I’m coming up on 10 years since I had my lasik surgery and I still had a very visceral reaction just hearing the premise of that death. May I assume you have been in that very nerve-wracking procedure?

Me? No. Oh no. Not at all. That eye procedure terrifies me. That’s why I pitched it. I try to write what scares me first and foremost.

Are there any real-life experiences you plan on drawing from for the elaborate death scenes the franchise is known for?

Yes. More things in everyday life that creep me out. I can’t spoil any more or else I will invoke the wrath of (producer) Craig Perry, but suffice it to say I don’t think the Lasik surgery sequence will be the most cringe-worthy.

Is there anything you feel was missing from the last few FD films that you’re hoping to revive in yours?

Yes! There was so much cool suspense, character development, and sense of mystery in the first Final Destination. Then you look at the fourth movie and it’s almost a porn version of the first—just one death sequence after another. And you know, it was still fun, I can’t lie, but for me it lacked a lot of what made the first movie so good. What I’m trying to do with this fifth film is make it work on its own; make it a supernatural thriller first, and a Final Destination movie second. It will have all the trademark elements fans love from the series, but hopefully it will surprise them, too. At least, that’s my hope…

Thanks again to Eric Heisserer for all his time!

Interview with NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET remake writer Eric Heisserer - Part I

It's not often that I get to interview a writer while his first produced film is sitting at number one on the box office charts. Last weekend, the remake of Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street opened with $32.2 million at the box office, and today and tomorrow, we're hosting an exclusive interview with screenwriter Eric Heisserer about his background, rebooting Freddy and his future work on two other horror franchises - The Thing and Final Destination 5.

Be warned - this interview is RIFE with spoilers for A Nightmare on Elm Street!

Tell me a little about your writing background. What was your writing “education,” formal or informal?

Informal. No college. I’m more of an experiential learner. I started writing short fiction after high school, and eventually migrated to screenplays. I wrote my first feature script in 1997. That spec, plus the next three features, was the equivalent of a formal education. That is to say, the scripts were awful. Just terrible. But I learned a lot from them.

The million dollar question that ever reader wants to know – how did you get your agent?

I got my agent after I got my manager, which is probably the more important question. A writer friend referred me to Julie Bloom, who read one of my specs and liked it, then demanded to read another. She doesn’t sign new clients based on just one good sample. Thankfully she liked my second spec as well.

I had to network with fellow writers and people on the edge of the industry for five years before I got to the point where a peer was both willing and able to refer me to Julie.

As I understand it, your first sale was a spec called The Manifestant, all the way back in 2000. How many scripts did you write before The Manifestant?

The Manifestant, about someone who could conjure things out of thin air, was the fourth feature spec I’d written.

Was The Manifestant the first spec your agent went out with?

This predated my time with Julie Bloom. I was basically hip-pocketed by a manager for that option to Artisan Entertainment. That manager later retired from the business.

Unless IMDB is completely wrong, A Nightmare on Elm Street is your first feature credit, so what were you doing the last ten years? Were you getting rewrite work? Assignment work?

My real break happened with the sale of The Dionaea House, based on the online epistolary story I wrote in 2004. That got me in the door more than any other work I’d done prior. In the years between that sale and Elm Street, I worked on a number of assignments, rewrites, and I sold a few pitches as well, both features and TV. A few times I got dangerously close to a produced credit. In one case, the film was two weeks from shooting when the studio pulled the plug due to casting problems. Elm Street is my first produced credit after clawing my way up for the past ten years. Which is pretty much everyone’s “overnight success” story in this town.

If I’m interpreting the writing credits correctly, you came onto A Nightmare on Elm Street to rewrite a draft by Wesley Strick. What brought the producers to you?

Either the producers or the studio wanted a fresh approach to the script after Strick had done a pass, and I was the right guy at the right time. My old spec of The Dionaea House got me in the door, and my passion for the franchise got me the rest of the way.

What’s it like to get the call “They want to see if you can write the Nightmare on Elm Street reboot?” Is it exciting? Terrifying? Is it hard to take on this kind of remake knowing that a certain segment of fandom is going to oppose it on principle?

It’s all those things. In my first meeting, producer Brad Fuller pointed at me and said “You fuck this up, you fuck us all.” I had to prove I was worthy of being hired, since with no credits to my name I was obviously a huge risk. I would’ve worked my hardest anyway, but those words kept me up at night more than my fear of nightmares.

I knew there would be no way to appease every fan out there while welcoming in new fans. The original is near and dear to me, marking one of the few movies I snuck into the theater to see, so it was a daunting task.

Is it a challenge to get some measure of creative freedom when working on one of these franchise films? With something like this, surely there are plenty of people above you either weighing in or flat out dictating terms. Is there a risk of becoming little more than a stenographer?

It could have been a real problem if we hadn’t all gotten together early on and discussed the kind of movie this was supposed to be; the tone and the feel of it. Once we figured that out, I was given some elbow room to play in that sandbox.

Did you end up pitching them on how you saw the character and the story first, and then they said “Yeah, that works for us?”

Mostly. They started by saying: “This is what we want kept from Strick’s draft. These elements are important to us.” Then we discussed what elements from Craven’s original were crucial. And then I was let loose to figure out a story and characters to meet those guidelines. Even then, it was like: “Here is a hammer and a dozen planks of wood. Go build us a house.”

Were you a fan of the original films and how did that inform your take? What were the important elements for you to retain?

I liked the original and the third film, Dream Warriors. I enjoyed bits and pieces of the other films quite a lot, but those two were my favorites. The problem: The longer I dwelled on the original, the more I felt paralyzed in front of the computer. I eventually had to set that movie aside and create a story from the inside out. It was a long and frustrating process that I now feel was a no-win situation.

One thing that stuck out to me is that it took at least 45 minutes before Nancy really became the protagonist. The first 35-40 minutes it’s really Kris’s (Katie Cassidy) story. Then she hands off to the character played by Thomas Dekkar, and he’s center stage for about ten minutes until Nancy really starts to have significant screentime. Why structure the story like this? Was it a deliberate attempt to pull a Psycho-like bait-and-switch, or were there simply other Nancy scenes that got removed in editing?

This was an element from Craven’s original the producers wanted to retain. In the 1984 film, Craven leads you to believe the bubbly blonde Tina (played by Amanda Wyss) is our protagonist and that Nancy is just a friend in her social circle. It’s not until Tina is thrown around and killed in her bedroom half an hour into the film that we discover Nancy is our heroine. So I can’t claim that concept; that’s all Wes Craven (and, as you mention, Psycho, to some extent).

How do you balance the classic moments retained from the original with the entirely new elements? Does it feel like a catch-22 where you find yourself saying, “Well, we CAN’T cut out the claw coming out of the bathtub, or the girl being pulled up the wall!” as well as “But we have to do something different with this – otherwise the audience will see no point to the remake!”

In most cases director Sam Bayer just picked his favorites, like Krueger coming out of the wall, and those ended up in the movie. I tried my hardest not to focus too much on homage and more on character and whatever ideas or fresh updates I could contribute to the story. I knew that if I focused too much on the original I’d get paralyzed again by the task of re-imagining Freddy Krueger.

What “pure Eric Heisserer” elements survived all the way into the final film?

I had a laundry list of horror clichés I wanted to subvert, like the beat where Kris washes up at the bathroom mirror and we all expect Freddy to appear in the reflection, but nothing happens. Some of those moments made it all the way to the end. Others were altered, usually due to budget or production problems. For instance, I tried to avoid the “Freddy standing in the middle of the road” moment since horror fans have seen variations of that a thousand times. Instead I had Freddy appear in the car with Quentin and Nancy, and we see a second after Nancy is gored that Quentin is the one having a micronap. He wakes from it just as he crashes the car into a tree. But for a number of reasons that scene was changed during production. And some changes caused other scenes to change with them.

Microsleep was another one of my ideas. But honestly it’s hard to recall all the ones of mine that survived. You tend to remember the ones that never made it off the page.

From what I’ve seen in the reviews, one of the more controversial points was making Freddy a child molester rather than a child killer. Were you a part of that decision, and what was the thinking behind the change?

That was something Strick introduced in his draft, based on his research into Craven’s early work on the 1984 film and his inspiration at the time. But a controversial case emerged at the time that caused the studio to flinch at the child molestation backstory, so Craven changed Krueger to a serial killer.

That was an impossible element for us to sell to audiences today. You can’t have a man kill 20-30 children in your hometown without everyone knowing about him for decades afterward. That sort of thing is a blight on a town’s history. Strick went back to Craven’s original idea of Krueger as a child molester, and I did my best to work with that idea and have it track.

Jumping off from that, at one point in the film, it’s suggested that Freddy might have wrongly accused of molesting. It would have been very gutsy to outright state that the kids lied or the parents reacted based on bad information. Was there ever a point where you considered following through on those hints? Do you think the audience would have accepted that kind of twist?

I don’t think anyone ever wanted Krueger to be innocent. We liked it as a false assumption or a red herring, but we never entertained the idea for Krueger. Because if he were innocent, then it’s a revenge tale, and that creates two problems. One: The movie’s hero would be Fred Krueger, and two: Once Krueger had his revenge against those who wronged him, the story would be complete.

I didn’t want to write a movie where you’re rooting for the monster. There are plenty of other horror franchises where you can get that. Friday the 13th, I’m looking at you. No, we needed Krueger to be a sick son of a bitch.

That said, the idea that the kids lied was based on a real incident of a day care center where the children began spinning tales because it got them attention from the parents and faculty, and before they knew it they had invented enough lies that they were terrified of being disciplined if they admitted it was made up, and one of the teachers was arrested on molestation charges. So it’s not like we were trying to stretch the truth. We were borrowing from the headlines.

It seemed like the movie might have done with a little more closure for the character of Quentin’s father, considering he’s the one who’s really responsible for Freddy’s death. Was there anything else with that character that ended up being eliminated in either the rewrites or the post-production process?

Oh certainly. I had a second confrontation with him and Quentin in one draft. My favorite version of that backstory actually had Nancy’s mother Gwen as the one who burns Freddy, because of all the kids tortured by him, Nancy got it the worst, and I could see Gwen snapping. Also it felt more interesting to see a mother being the main antagonistic force against Fred Krueger instead of angry-dad Clancy Brown (whom I love as an actor; he’s a great guy).

We lost a few scenes with the kids and their parents due to pacing concerns.

Have you already started thinking about what you’d like to do in the sequel, if asked?

I have a binder full of ideas for a sequel. I don’t know if I’ll have the chance to work on it, but I hope this time around I could learn from the pitfalls of this first movie and better shepherd the story from script to screen.

But wait! There's more!

Part II - Eric talks about his upcoming work on The Thing remake and Final Destination 5.

You can find Eric on Twitter: @writerspry. He's a stand-up guy and was great about giving his time for this interview, so tweet him some thanks if you get a chance.

Compete archive of my interviews with pro writers

It seemed like a good idea to put together a post that links to all the interviews I've done with professional writers over the life of this blog. This will be updated with further links as each new interview is added.

Interview with Dan Callahan, writer of COLLEGE and DEMOTED:
Part I - The Writing Process
Part II - Getting an Agent and Selling the Script
Part III - Notes, Rewriting, Casting and SUPERBAD
Part IV - More Rewrites
Part V - Release and Reaction


Interview with Jericho and Human Target's Robert Levine:
Part I - Climbing the ladder as a writer's assistant
Part II - Working on Jericho's first season
Part III - Writing season two of Jericho
Part IV - Writing the Jericho comic book and getting an agent
Part V - Writing for Human Target


Interview with screenwriter Eric Heisserer - A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET remake:
Part I - Breaking in and writing the ELM STREET remake
Part II - Details on THE THING and FINAL DESTINATION 5

Interview with Privileged writer/"This is Your Pilot Speaking" blogger Margaux Froley:
Part I - School, internships and assistant jobs
Part II - The Warner Brothers Television Fellowship and working on the staff of Privileged
Part III - Staffing season, getting representation and spec pilots

Interview with Shrek Forever After and Date Night writer Josh Klausner:
Part I - Breaking in and SHREK
Part II - DATE NIGHT

Interview with web comedy filmmakers Chad, Matt & Rob:
Part I - Breaking out on the web
Part II - The Interactive Adventures
Part III - Producing web shorts

Interview with Amy Baack, Assistant to "V" showrunner Scott Rosenbaum

Interview with director Gregg Bishop:
Part I - Making a $15,000 film
Part II - Making DANCE OF THE DEAD

Interview with Scott Towler, writer's assistant to Michelle Nader (100 Questions, Kath & Kim)
Part I
Part II

Interview with SCREAM 4 Co-Producer Carly Feingold
Part I - The path to being Wes Craven's Creative Exec
Part II - What does a Creative Executive do and what do they look for?
Part III - Making Scream 4

Video interview with TV writer Liz Tigelaar, creator Life Unexpected.
Part 1 - Breaking in as an assistant
Part 2 - First Staff Writer Job on "American Dreams"
Part 3 - How Do I Get an Agent?
Part 4 - Selling a Pilot
Part 5 - Personal Themes in Writing
Part 6 - Genesis of "Life Unexpected"
Part 7 - First-Time Showrunner
Part 8 - Developing the second year of LUX
Part 9 - Dealing with network notes
Part 10 - Controversial LUX storylines
Part 11 - LUX lives on
Part 12 - Network overall deal, working on Once Upon a Time and Revenge
Part 13 - The Bitter Questions

Video interview with Franklin Leonard about Black List 3.0:

Video interview with screenwriter F.Scott Frazier:
Part 1 - His stats and process
Part 2 - "How do you get an agent?"
Part 3 - The Working Writer.
Part 4 - The Bitter Questions

Video interview with Franklin Leonard about The Black List:
Part 1 - The Origin of the Black List
Part 2 - Criticisms of the Black List
Part 3 - The Black List Statistics

Video interview with film and TV writer Jeffrey Lieber (Lost, Miami Medical, Necessary Roughness):
Part 1 - "How did you get an agent?"
Part 2 - First sales and going into TV
Part 3 - The early genesis of Lost
Part 4 - The process of developing a show
Part 5 - Cable TV vs. Network TV
Part 6 -  The Bitter Questions

Interview with Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, co-director of Radio Silence's DEVIL'S DUE:
Part I
Part II

An interview with Victoria Aveyard, writer of RED QUEEN and ETERNAL


Writer/director Riley Stearns and actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead on FAULTS:
Part I - Origins of the story
Part II - Complex Characters and roles for women.
Part III- Making your first movie.
Part IV - Having confidence as a storyteller.
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